Nanking (textile)
Nanking (after the Chinese city of Nanjing ) is a canvas-like calico fabric. Originally made from yellowish red Chinese cotton (Gossypium religiosum), it was valued for its color fastness . Imitated in Europe, nanking was made from dyed white cotton well into the 20th century. To do this, the metabolism was alternately immersed in iron sulfate or iron chloride and soda baths. In the air, the initially green color changes to rust-brown iron hydroxide . The artificially dyed cotton fabrics were, however, less uniform in color, not washable and also less durable.
In the course of time, other gray, green, blue-colored or patterned fabrics were also referred to as nanking.
Light summer dresses from Nanking were particularly popular in the 19th century. There are numerous places in contemporary literature in which yellow nanking pants are mentioned as elegant, tight-fitting clothing. For example in Heinrich Heine's poem Götterdämmerung : “The men put on their Nankin pants, / And Sunday skirts with golden mirror buttons; ... ".
At the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese nanking went out of fashion.
swell
- Meyers Großes Konversationslexikon, Volume 14, Leipzig, 1908, p. 407.
- Nanking . In: Merck's Warenlexikon . 3rd ed. 1884 ff., P. 372 f.
Individual evidence
- ^ Heinrich Heine: Götterdämmerung , Book of Songs, 1827